Josquin is known as the most adventurous composer of his time – the one who could turn his hand to any challenge. This restless, searching intellect is on display in every one of his Mass settings, yet as Peter Phillips says, few offer as great a contrast as Missa Gaudeamus and Missa L’ami Baudichon. Missa Gaudeamus represents Renaissance artistry at its most intense. Largely based on the ?rst six notes of a substantial chant melody, it deploys mathematics in a number of clever, but rewardingly audible ways. Written for the Feast of All Saints, this is high art. By contrast Missa L’ami Baudichon represents Renaissance artistry at its most skittish. Based on just three notes from a popular secular song, which sound to an English ear distractingly like the opening of Three Blind Mice, it makes few demands on the listener outside enjoying a luminous C major sonority. This comes close to low art – a vulgar reference to female genitals comes twice in the French-language text of the very secular folksong that Josquin used as his melodic model and name for the Mass. The vulgarity of the original song makes it an unusual starting point for a sacred work, yet despite this the Mass survives in one of the Vatican choirbooks, where presumably it was sung as part of the liturgy. This is the seventh of nine albums in The Tallis Scholars' project to record all Josquin's masses.